Department of English and Literature Writing Program

The UVU Writing Program focuses on writing skills for many different purposes and
goals. Learning how to navigate and make choices within different contexts is at the
core of our program and ensures that students will see writing as a process that is
approached differently considering the needs of specific audiences, genres, and media.
Across a variety of courses and emphases, our program ultimately stresses the importance
of writing to academic, professional, and civic life, leading to an educational experience
that shows how writing is integrated into every sphere of public life.

Many of our courses focus on academic writing within the university. These courses focus on the intellectual expectations and values
of the academy that aid students in our own classes and beyond. Lower-division courses
focus on the fundamentals of critical analysis, academic voice, and credible research.
Workshops and conferences are a critical component of helping students situate the
writing process as a social endeavor. Upper-division courses focus on helping students
strengthen their own academic voices while increasing the expectations for rigorous
research and nuanced arguments.

Our technical writing classes focus on professional and workplace writing with a heavy emphasis on project
planning and document design. Students are introduced to common technical writing
genres and industry standard software that they will be expected to use in an eventual
job. Our editing courses provide proofing skills that can supplement a student’s writing
process in any course and often lead to work experience on one of our department’s
journal publications. Many of our students are frequently placed in technical writing
internships with businesses throughout Utah Valley.

Beyond academia and business, many courses in our program stress civic engagement and social change. These courses focus on the power of writing to become an engaged citizen and to
make change in the world. Many of these courses have assignments where students produce
texts for audiences outside the university walls in order to reach a community audience.
Some of our students have even received grant money to initiate projects that will
make positive change at university, community, and state levels. Our department additionally
holds an annual Writing for Social Change conference that encourages students and
community members to engage in conversations about the most pressing social issues
of our time.